What are parents and children to do solve the homework dilemma?

Homework has become one of the biggest issues for parents and kids. It brings with it anger, frustration, tears, fears and family disharmony. Jack, a nine year old, often spends all afternoon and evening doing homework, sometimes until eleven o’clock at night. In addition, he always needs help with it, so his mom and dad got him a homework helper from a tutoring service.

Jack’s Dad: “When I was in fourth grade I came home from school and played ball with the kids on the block. Then I ate dinner with my family, did my homework and went to sleep. I have two masters degrees; I did fine. The only thing Jack has time for is homework and dinner.”

His dad is correct questioning the volume of homework. “Is there something wrong with Jack’s teacher?” his Mom said. “My Grandmother was a teacher and she said Jack has more homework in one night than she used to give in one week.

Grandma is right. During the late fifties and into the sixties, kids in elementary school had a weekly spelling test and a test on the times tables once in a while, but that was it. They didn’t have hours of homework, piles of workbook pages, long-term projects, midterms and finals. When they got home from school, they did what children should do: play.

Homework didn’t begin until seventh grade, the first year of what was called junior high school. But, even then most kids didn’t need to carry home all their books because they got their homework done during study hall.

Even high school kids rarely had so much that they couldn’t get it done watching “Dick Clark’s American Bandstand on television.” They also had enough time to be in the school show, or in the marching band, or on a sports team without having a complete meltdown.

There is an optimum amount of homework for average children. Too little and they don’t have a chance to practice what they learned in school; too much and they click-off their brains and simply push pencils around to get it done.

• What is Quality Homework?
• What is Too Much Homework?
• Why Do Children Struggle with Homework?
• What Can Parents Do to Help?

Find the answers in our FREE “Top 25 Homework Tips” booklet. Here are a few of the tips. To download your free booklet, click here.

• Tip #1. What Is a Reasonable Amount? Many parents think that a large amount of homework is a sign of a good teacher. That is false. A good teacher helps children learn the material and provides a reasonable amount of homework while at the same time helping children to develop a love of learning. Too much homework doesn’t provide children adequate time to process and rehearse, which makes it counterproductive. However, worse than that, it turns them off to school and to learning.
• Tip # 5. How Much is Enough? Here is a general guide for the typical amount of time children should be expected to spend on homework each school day: grades K-2, 10-20 minutes; grades 3-6, 30-60 minutes; grades 7-12 will vary considerably, depending on subjects, projects due, tests, and so on, but a reasonable average is about two hours, with more on weekends, as needed, for major projects and exams.
• Tip #12. Too Difficult: If homework is continuously too challenging and difficult, then a child will try to avoid it. Contact the teacher and see if it is only your child who is finding it too difficult or if the problem is class-wide.
• Tip # 17. Too Disorganized: If your child brings home his book and forgets the assignment, or brings home the assignment and forgets the book – or if he forgets both! – instead of criticizing and punishing him, help him to develop strategies to remember what he needs. Work with him to come up with a plan. If it doesn’t work, come up with another plan. For example, obtain a second set of books to keep at home. The teacher may be able to provide this or you can purchase them discounted on line. It also helps if there is a back-up plan to get the assignments – for example, a buddy system or on-line access to the homework assignments.
• Tip # 21. Too Unmotivated: Most kids are not motivated to do homework because they simply don’t want to do it; they eventually complete it, but reluctantly. Others appear unmotivated when in fact they avoid homework to protect their egos. Here’s their logic. If they don’t try and fail, it is due to a lack of motivation. If they do try and end up failing, it could be due to a label they cannot live with: “stupidity.” If your child is unmotivated, it might help if you explain the role homework plays in the larger scheme of school and beyond.

Our second grader loves school. But homework is another issue. He hates to do homework, sometimes to the point of throwing tantrums. We tell him that if he gets it done, he can play. But he never has time to play since it takes him hours because he wastes so much time.

We’re trying to teach him that he has to do his homework, but things just seem to be getting worse. B.L.

Dear B.L.,

Homework is a major problem today. It’s not a problem for children who enjoy school work. To them, homework is like play. But for many children, school is work. For some, like your son, drudgery. It makes them tired and stressed. These children need to come home from school, eat a snack and then play.

Playing is such an important part of child development that some communities have convinced the school boards to encourage teachers not to give homework in the lowest grades and to limit the amounts in the higher elementary grades.

However, since your child does have homework, let’s deal with that.

Help him find a time that’s convenient, when he’s not tired or hungry. If he works diligently on it and it takes him more than 20 minutes, which is enough for second graders, talk to his teacher. He may not understand the material, or it’s too much for him at this stage of his development.

I’ve compiled a detailed list of the “Top 25 Homework Tips.” Some of them may help solve the homework issue in your home. It’s a free bonus when you sign up for my free “School Success Newsletter” in the right-hand column at the top of the page.

Wishing your and your child a happy and successful school year,

Dr. Linda

Please leave us a comment. How do you deal with homework in your home? What works with your kids?

Most kids say they don’t like doing Homework.  But why?

For many kids, they’d rather be outdoors playing or watching TV or texting their friends. These are certainly understandable reasons.  Usually, when parents and teachers help them understand how important homework is to school success, they’ll buckle down and do it.

It helps if homework is always done at the same time each afternoon or evening, and there’s a regular, quiet place to do the work. In addition, kids need to have good study skills.

But what happens when homework is a struggle? When your child is just too tired or over-stimulated to do homework? Then homework isn’t finished. Sometimes it’s missed completely. Studying for tests is rushed and the end result can be poor test grades.

One of the main reasons for this challenge is simply too many outside activities. There aren’t enough hours in the day for your child to eat, sleep, go to school, do four or five (or more) outside activities and do homework too.

Finishing homework and getting enough sleep suffer when kids have too many outside activities.

I once worked with a boy who took music lessons two times a week, played soccer in the fall, basketball during the winter, and baseball in the spring, and was on a swimming team on Saturdays all year. He was also in a drama club in his town. Drama club involved putting on a play twice a year.

No wonder this 9th grader didn’t want to do his homework.  He suffered from one of the “terrible toos”–doing TOO much. He was exhausted from being overbooked.

The average 9th grader needs at least two hours free every day for doing homework.

To help them figure out what their schedule looks like for an average week, download my free “Daily Schedule” form. Have your child fill it in. Block out at least two hours a night to do homework and study. It doesn’t have to be two hours straight.

If  your child doesn’t see a minimum of two free hours on the schedule, they’re doing too much. When children are unhappy about having to drop some activities, remind them that summer vacation is a great time for these activities.

Don’t forget to leave a comment.  Let my readers know how you’ve solved one of the “terrible “toos” problem at your home.

Dear Dr. Linda,

My daughter does her homework while she’s text messaging her friends, listening to music and chatting with her friends on Facebook. She argues that she can do her homework while doing all this. Is she right or should I make her do her homework at the kitchen table so I can watch her? Very Frustrated Mom.

Dear Frustrated Mom,

Teenagers value their social life and don’t always understand or agree with advice from Moms. Your daughter will argue that she is doing her homework, and she probably is. She doesn’t realize that she’s doing her homework like a robot but not learning anything from it.

But having her sit at the kitchen table will be torture for her and for you. You don’t need to watch her do her homework.

When you’re both calm and she’s listening, talk about the research that has been done on the teenage brain and multitasking. It doesn’t work. The teenagers who didn’t multitask while they doing homework or preparing for tests finished their work quicker and learned more. In fact there’s a lot of research that proves multitasking doesn’t work for anybody, not just teens.

However, listening to music if it isn’t too loud may help. Research shows that listening to music while studying helps some kids, especially kids with ADHD.

She’ll just have to experiment to see if music helps her concentrate.

Suggest to your daughter that she set up time to do her homework and set up another time to talk to her friends. This way she’ll have the best of both worlds. She’ll do better in school, and she’ll still have time to talk to her friends. Let her know that you think it’s important for her to have time to talk to her friends.

Best wishes for homework time for you and your daughter,
Dr. Linda

Be sure to leave your school success question for me in the comment section below. I publish readers questions and answers every Friday.

Is Homework a Hassle in Your Home? Use these Three Tools to Make It Easier.

Time Management. Be sure your child has enough time to do homework, and you have enough time to help if needed. To be sure, download this schedule template and fill it in with your family. You may want more than one. Maybe fill one in for each member of the family. By doing so, you may see that your kids’ days are completely booked up between school and after school activities. They have no down time to relax or play much less do homework.

Homework Helper. Be sure that your children aren’t spending too much time on homework. Even though homework may be beneficial, it can also be counterproductive. The following are appropriate time spans for homework per grade: 1^st – 10 minutes, 2nd -20 minutes, 3rd – 30 minutes, 4^th – 40 minutes, 5th -50 minutes, 6th – 60 minutes, 7th and 8th – 60 to 90 minutes, 9^th thru 12^th – approximately two hours. If your child is spending more time doing homework than is recommended, find out why. Maybe, she needs some extra help, maybe there’s too much homework, maybe he’s not completing classwork. To help with homework problems, read my free homework advice booklet.

Organize Papers. If you can’t find the homework sheets because you and your child are drowning in school papers, you need to get three basic items: a good three-hole punch, a large three ring binder and dividers. With your child, at a convenient time for both of you, sort out all the old school papers from his backpack and binders. Discard papers that definitely will not be needed in the future. Put the remaining papers in the binder under each subject. Do this weekly to stay organized.

Now, with a little help from you, your child can stay on top of homework.

Kids (and adults) who don’t get enough sleep can’t function properly. Sleep restores energy to the body, particularly to the brain and nervous system.
When your child doesn’t get enough sleep, she has trouble concentrating on her schoolwork and remembering what she’s learned, even controlling her temper. The amount of sleep people need varies. Most kids and teens need at least eight or more hours of sleep. Monitor your child to be sure she’s getting enough sleep, especially if she’s a teenager. Many teens suffer in school because they’re sleep-deprived. They stay up late and then get up early to be in class by 7:30.

Research has shown that this early school schedule isn’t in step with the biological clock of teenagers. They need early morning sleep and aren’t getting it.

 Symptoms of Sleep Deprivation:

• Your child is constantly sleepy.
• Your child is cranky or sad.
• Your child has trouble concentrating.
• Your child gets hostile or weepy over small things.
• Your child reacts irrationally over the smallest decision, problem or assignment.
 
 Three Strategies to Combat Sleep Deprivation:

1. Review the daily schedule. Work with your child to adjust her schedule so she doesn’t always end up doing homework late at night. Since children need to play at some point during the day and many teens are busy with after-school activities, this isn’t always easy. If your child continues to do homework late in the evening, go over her schedule and see what activities she can drop or move to a different time so she can get her homework done earlier.

Many parents encourage their children to get homework done as soon as they walk in the door, but many kids need to do something physical after school to unwind, and others need to relax and have some free time. Still others have trouble doing homework when their siblings or friends are out playing. It’s important to gauge what your child needs. Determine together the optimal time for doing homework every day. Help her stay on this schedule.

2. Make up for lost sleep. Allow your child to sleep in on weekends to make up for lost time during the week.

3. Work to have school open later. It’s a long shot, but talk to your school board members to see if it’s possible to shift the school day a little bit later. High school students in particular need a later school start. Starting school later has met with great success in some school districts. It sounds naive, but if enough parents and kids support this shift, it’s possible.

Get teachers behind the move. Be prepared. Do a search for the latest information. Since school principals and other administrators will want to see the research, bring several copies with you. Better yet, have copies of the research distributed ahead of time to everyone on the school board.

Remember that sleep deprivation not only gets in the way of school success, but can also cause health issues. When kids don’t get enough sleep, their immune systems are weakened. They get more colds and are more vulnerable to the flu and other illnesses. Then they miss school on top of it.

How do you get your kid to go to bed early enough? Please let us know. Our readers love to read your comments.

It’s not just ADHD kids who are disorganized? Kids who don’t have ADHD sometimes can’t remember to bring homework home either. Can’t remember to take the homework back to school when they did bring it home. It’s not intentional. He really means to get his homework done. He just forgets.

Maybe her school materials are poorly organized. Maybe he has poor time-management skills. With all the distractions bombarding kids today, it’s not surprising that they forget so much and are so unorganized.

Without some basic organizational strategies, kids do poorly in school and their grades plummet. Some kids end up cheating or lying–whatever it takes to survive school with a minimum of criticism and punishment. Disorganization and forgetfulness get in the way of success at school.

You can teach your child how to be more organized. Maybe you’ll even find some of these tips useful around your home.

Seven Tips to Help Your Disorganized Kid

1. Color code: Help your child organize his school books and notebooks by color-coding them. Use colored book covers, stickers, labels, stars, or markers with one color for each subject. You can also color code the books by adding colored stickers.

2. Clear book covers: Consider using clear book covers to cover books so that your child can always see the covers.

3. Locker organization: Help your child organize his locker. Brainstorm with him to come up with the best solution. Often locker organizers or locker shelves help a lot. Put morning  books on one shelf  and afternoon books on another, or math and science on one shelf, language arts and social studies on another, for example. Label the shelves.

4. Extra set of books: Keep an extra set of textbooks at home. Before you buy them, ask if the school can provide them. Check the web too for companies who rent textbooks.

5. Organizer: Help your child develop daily schedules. Some schools provide daily planners. If your child’s school doesn’t give out planners, you’ll need to buy one or a PDA (personal digital assistant) from an office-supply store. While you’re there, you and your child can look around at other products that help with organizing.

6. Structure: Offer to help your child organize her homework time. As soon as she gets home, go over the list of assignments due the next day as well as any long-term assignments. If you wait until later, it may be too late to get an assignment from a friend or a book from school. Help her decide which assignment she’s going to do first. Then help her figure enough time for each assignment.

7. Home organization: You and your disorganized kid need to decide on one place to put finished homework. One place to put everything that needs to go back to school including his lunch. One hook for his jacket. And keeping his room uncluttered helps also. Have him set a weekly schedule for cleaning and organizing his room. For some kids, they’ll need to do this every day for awhile until organization becomes a habit. Just as you did for his locker, find shelves and cubes to put things in. Color coding helps here also. You may need to help them at first.

Kids will do best at this new organization routine if it’s simple, and they’ve had a say in deciding what will work and what won’t. Disorganized kids can go overboard with color coding, labels, and stickers which only leads to more disorganization because it’s too complicated. They may need help in making it easy.

Being organized gives kids a sense of power and control over school and their lives. As they begin to feel good about themselves, they’ll start doing better in school.

How do you help your kids stay organized? Other parents will appreciate you comments.

And it’s always kind of embarrassing. After all, you’ve been there for language arts, for social studies, even the dreaded science project.

Time to call his teachers. Explain exactly what’s going on. Be honest. Tell your child’s teacher you can’t do math.

One teacher I know who knew several students were having problems had them come in during their lunch hour for extra help.  She even set up two after-school classes every week for students who needed help.

Tutoring is also a great option if math continues to be a problem.

What’s worked at your house?  Leave us a comment.

Jack, a nine year old, often spends all afternoon and evening doing homework, sometimes until eleven o’clock at night. In addition, he always needs help with it, so his mom and dad got him a homework helper from a tutoring service.

Jack’s Dad: “When I was in fourth grade I came home from school and played ball with the kids on the block. Then I ate dinner with my family, did my homework and went to sleep. I have two masters degrees; I did fine. The only thing Jack has time for is homework and dinner. My mother was a teacher and she said Jack has more homework in one night than she used to give in one week.”

Homework usually didn’t begin until seventh grade. But, even then most kids didn’t need to carry home all their books home from school. They didn’t need a homework helper because they got their homework done at school during study hall.

Even high school kids could usually get their homework done and still watch “Dick Clark’s American Bandstand” on TV  They also had enough time to be in the school show, or in the marching band, or on a sports team without having a complete meltdown. Rarely did parents have to help them.

Maybe it wasn’t enough for today but it certainly wasn’t too much. How much homework should my child have? 

The optimum amount of homework for average children depends on their grade in school.  But too little and they don’t have a chance to practice what they learn in school; too much and they click-off their brains and simply push pencils around to get it done.  And it shouldn’t be so difficult that parents have to help every night.

You can use this guide to judge whether or not your child has too much or too little homework. grades K-2, 10-20 minutes; grades 3-6, 30-60 minutes; grades 7-12 will vary considerably, depending on subjects, projects due, tests, and so on, but a reasonable average is about two hours, with more on weekends, as needed, for major projects and exams.

What can I do if I don’t agree with the amount of homework assigned?

Children need homework to succeed in school.  If you don’t agree with the amount of homework or are concerned that it’s too difficult, talk to your child’s teacher. If your child’s teacher isn’t responsive, talk to the school principal. Assertive parenting on your part helps.

Your child’s success in school depends not only on what he does in school but how well he’s doing with homework.

Got homework strategies that work at your house or questions? Leave us and our readers a comment.